


home

by mayuaka



Category: AI: The Somnium Files (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, mizuki end, thank you ai somnium files for letting me write something coherent for once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-14 22:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21023153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayuaka/pseuds/mayuaka
Summary: Date leans forward, expression suddenly serious. “Mizuki, what did you see in my dream?”





	home

When they get home, she almost expects the room to be black and white again, devoid of color except for where the sun slants through the blinds. 

She glances around. There’s the trash can, where the notice about bring your parent to school day was. The speaker, where Date found her. Adorabbit, laying in the same place as usual (and not ominously rising from a pot). The bed...her school bag tucked away in the corner…

_ I wish...that Mizuki grows up happy and healthy. _

She shakes her head to clear it. Everything’s alright now. They’re safe. Date’s awake.

“Mizuki?”

She looks up at Date. His left eye is closed, like he’s permanently winking. She wonders what having an AI for an eye is like.

“What? Are you gonna thank me? I saved your life, you know.” 

“Hey, I saved yours too. We’re even.” He smiles and settles down on the couch, and Mizuki curls up on the chair next to it. He leans forward, expression suddenly serious. There’s something in his eyes–eye–that looks so pained, so exhausted, and then it’s gone, replaced by a casual tone, as if they met life-or-death situations regularly (though she supposes Date might, with his job description and all). “Mizuki, what did you see in my dream?”

“Um...well…” She can’t meet his eye anymore.

_ I am not...what you need,  _ Date had said. Even if Date was an insensitive jerk most of the time, she had  _ some _ consideration for how he felt. At least a little. It felt kind of wrong for her to just...expose his thoughts like that, to see what lay underneath his annoyingly persistent exterior. But she was grateful all the same, because of course she’d always known that he cared and he was  _ trying _ –and seeing the extent of it, what memories lay trapped in his subconscious, cemented it all so deeply that recalling it all again made tears prick at the corners of her eyes. 

“You were...being an idiot,” she grumbles, crossing her arms.

Out of the corner of her eye, Date frowns. “Where was it?”

“Here, duh.” Mizuki gestures around her. “It was kind of lame. You could have dreamed up any place you wanted, but you chose this dirty apartment.”

Date’s expression switches to annoyed. “Hey! You live here too, it’s not just my mess.”

She’s caught on the implication of how much he thinks of home, too distracted to argue further, and grateful for Date’s innate ability to get sidetracked by the least important details. The air stills for a moment, and she thinks that he’s just going to drop the subject entirely. Unfortunately, his other talents include being stupidly persistent and annoying.

“What happened in it, though? What did you do to wake me up?”

“Why do you wanna know? You’re awake and healed now, it doesn’t matter.”

“Tell me,” he insists. “Please, Mizuki.”

She dares to meet his gaze. Why is he so concerned about this? “Why don’t you just ask for the recording?”

“I–” he starts and stops, and if Mizuki knows anything from four years of living with him, the idiot probably literally just remembered that a recording  _ exists. _ “I wanted to hear it from you,” he tries to cover for himself. 

“Hmph.”

“Come on, just tell me. Just tell me what happened at the end, even.” Why, why does he sound so desperate?

_ Date! I need you! _

_ Thank you, Mizuki. _

“You don’t need me to tell you. You can just go look at it.”

Silence falls again. Date’s face becomes weirdly unreadable, like he’s not quite there in the room with her, like he’s looking right through her. She doesn’t like it at all. 

“Date?” she calls, and he seems to snap out of it. His one eye focuses again.

“Yeah, Mizuki?”

“I didn't see anything bad, if that’s what you’re so worried about,” she admits, watching some tension visibly sink from his shoulders. “I just saw...that you cared about me.”

“I cared about you,” he repeats to himself. “I care about you,” he amends, but he’s still distracted, still drifting in and out of consciousness.

“Why do you look so sad about that, huh? I'm telling you, I know that you–that you love me!” She suddenly stands up, nearly shouting at him, and she doesn’t know why herself. “I saw you do all these things for me, and I chose  _ you, _ Date! So stop looking so dejected because I saved your life!” Her voice cracks and she’s fighting back tears, tears that Date doesn’t deserve, because he’s such an idiot for worrying, and he’s so selfish to have just gone and protected her like that and left her all alone while he laid in a hospital bed not waking up.

He stares at her.

“I chose  _ you, _ Date. I called out for  _ you. _ I needed you back. I needed you here with me.”

He keeps looking at her without a word.

“Are you even listening? Say something!” she yells, too loud in their tiny home, hopefully loud enough to get through Date’s thick skull.

The only sound in her ears is her own shaky, choked up breathing. She wants the Date she knows back, the one that has zero tact, that will argue with her about the most minuscule things, stubborn and stupid and–

“I'm sorry.”

She meets his eye through a blur of tears that she blinks away quickly. He stands up with her, closes the distance between them, and wraps his arms around her gently. It feels like–it feels like a warm blanket settling across her shoulders, and she can’t help but start sobbing freely into his coat. She’s safe here, surrounded by Date, and she can cry all she wants. She hugs him back, tightly, and she has no idea how long they stay there together like that, with her tears staining Date’s coat and his hands laid softly on her back.

Mizuki shifts to look up at him. Date smiles softly, and she can’t help but smile back.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I was worried that you saw something I wouldn’t have wanted you to see.”

She can’t resist. “What, like your weird videos?”

He recoils, dropping his arms and insisting, “No! I mean, what are you talking about? I’ve never–”

“Just shut up, Date, it’s fine,” she interrupts, trying to force casualness into her tone. “All I saw were your memories of me. It was kind of nice, you know, seeing how much you cared.” 

“I was just–that was just–” he tries to counter, and Mizuki knows they’re back to normal now.

“You can’t deny it! I saw it in your mind, so don’t even try.”

Date sighs and shakes his head, but he looks so relieved compared to when he’d first asked her that she mentally forgives him for freezing up like that earlier. Outside, though–

“Promise me you’ll never do that again.”

“Do what?”

“Leave me alone and make me worry about you! And just tell me what’s bothering you next time,” she grumbles. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Date agrees, with too much flippancy and fondness in his voice for her liking. “I promise.”

“Then you should fulfill your other promise too! You never took me out to eat.”

“You told me you didn’t–oh, fine, we’ll go. Soon. After the rest of the stuff about the case dies down, we’ll go.”

She doubts Date will remember unless she reminds him again later, but that’s just him being Date. She feels...oddly warm, almost giddy, and she can’t recall a time she’s ever felt so utterly and completely safe.

When she gets into bed that night, she sleeps uninterrupted for the first time in days.

**Author's Note:**

> i finished mizuki end and my brain immediately came up with this so. i hope it was okay. i love them so much


End file.
